High Tension

This French horror film suffers from a dreadfully horrible dub job and a “big twist” that is a little too obvious and totally unnecessary. Two young women visit an isolated farmhouse and find themselves pursued by a nasty truck driver (the villain is a mixture of the killers from Halloween, I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Director Alexandre Aja comes up with a few good scares, but not enough to maintain the chills for the entire running time. The soundtrack is a mixture of people talking in French and terribly discordant English dubbing that hurts the film. (Hey, producers. We can read!) The murders are gruesome, although the version being shown in the United States has had some of its violence removed in order to get the R rating. Fans of this sort of thing probably can expect a future DVD where more of the killer’s work can be seen onscreen. This is a movie that leaves you feeling dirty.